
What’s your first thought when you think of the structures involved in breathing? For many people, the answer is the lungs. Gordon Mitchell, Ph.D., a PHHP professor of physical therapy and director of the UF Breathing Research and Therapeutics Center, or BREATHE, has a different answer.
“Breathing isn’t actually about the lungs,” Mitchell said. “Lungs are important. I love my lungs. But breathing is ultimately about the nervous system and the muscles that drive breaths. At the BREATHE Center, this is the focus of our research.”
The multidisciplinary UF BREATHE Center is one of a kind. While many centers across the United States specialize in pulmonary function, no other focuses on respiratory neuromuscular function. The goal is to unite basic and clinician scientists to inform each other’s work.
The main cause of mortality in individuals with neuromuscular diseases, according to Mitchell, is because they fail to continue breathing. Respiratory distress and breathing abnormalities can also have profound impacts on patients who have experienced a stroke, traumatic brain injury or spinal cord injury. For patients with ALS, respiratory failure may result in ventilator use for the rest their lives. Individuals with these types of neurological injuries or disorders are susceptible to nervous system damage or impaired muscle function related to breathing. That’s where UF BREATHE comes in.
“Our center is remarkable in that we have researchers studying fundamental science to make basic discoveries. Then those discoveries are used to pioneer innovative clinical trials,” said Mitchell.
Boasting over 50 investigators across 20 different UF departments, the center links UF scientists with national and international organizations that support biomedical research. It also provides educational and research opportunities to predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees through the National Institutes of Health-funded BREATHE Training Program.
Many of the researchers involved in the Brooks-UF PHHP Research Collaboration are at the forefront of UF BREATHE Center research, including BREATHE clinical associate director, Emily Fox, Ph.D., D.P.T., P.T., who is also the collaboration’s director.
“One of our current initiatives is an intermittent hypoxia consortium, where we are exploring the ability of acute intermittent hypoxia as a therapeutic to treat people with spinal cord injury, ALS and other neurological disorders,” Mitchell said. “The Brooks-PHHP Research Collaboration is essential to this research. The basic science doesn’t translate without good clinical colleagues.”
In addition to Brooks Rehabilitation, the BREATHE Center collaborates with Harvard University, Spaulding Rehabilitation, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, the University of Melbourne in Australia and many other globally recognized institutions.
“It’s gratifying to think that the work we are doing not only improves breathing, which is what we started with, but also impacts a variety of targets we never planned on, like walking and bladder function,” said Mitchell. “If we can do anything to improve the lives of patients with neurological conditions and injuries, we feel good about it.”